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Rejuvenation
Rejuvenation is a catch-all term for every kind of life-extending, anti-ageing and mortality-avoiding precedure that exists in the galaxy. This is usually achieved through advanced medical science, though more esoteric mechanisms such as soul leeching and warp-related interference can also be found. Many species have their own ways to prolong their lifespan, and they are listed and detailed here. 'Humanity' Humanity has practised life-extension since the days of the Dark Age of Technology, and this has persisted through the rule of the Imperium of Man (as well as non-Imperial human factions). The typical lifespan of an ordinary human can vary wildly depending on the world and conditions in which they live, however the typical age of death on most civilised worlds and in upper-middle hives is between 70 and 80 standard Terran years. Through the use of arcane science & engineering the Adeptus Mechanicus can allow a person to live for centuries, but the availablility of such procedures depends immensely on wealth, power and available technology. As such the vast majority of recipients of life extending technology are members of the Nobility and the Adeptus Mechanicus. 'Bionics' The flesh is weak - or so is the belief of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Cybernetic life extension is a simple principle whereby failing organic components are replaced with artificial ones. Thanks the advanced technology of the Adeptus Mechanicus anything from limbs, to organs, to entire nervous systems can be replaced. However as a person's life goes on they will inevitably require more and more bionic augmentation, the maintainence of which increases exponentially. Because of this only scions of the Adeptus Mechanicus themselves can unlock the real upper limits of bionic life extension, for they have the knowledge to maintain themselves rather than constantly having to pay others as non-AdMech humans would. The most 'basic' bionic replacements for life extension purposes are the heart & lungs. A bionic heart & lungs can extend a humans lifespan to 200 years or so, but after that the degradation among more banal organs like kidneys and the liver will take hold. Complete internal organ replacement (aside from the brain) can keep a human alive until roughly 400 years of age, but after that only near-'total' replacement of biological components will stave off death. The oldest bionic humans are high-ranking members of the Adeptus Mechanicus and oftentimes the only biological thing left of them is their brain, and by shedding the entirety of their weak flesh they are capable of living in excess of 1000 years. After this however mental degradation takes hold and the cyborg will begin to lose their mind, slipping further and further into dementia until they either get themselves killed or simply shut down. Bionic life extension is prodigously expensive so those outside the Adeptus Mechanicus often use it as a last resort, for example if they suffer a sudden heart failure. Bionic limbs on the other hand are relatively cheap (depending on quality) but are typically only used if the original limb was lost, and they have no life extending qualities. This makes them quite common among members of human military forces. A bionic limb's performance compared with a standard human limb varies depending on quality, and they are usually recycled after the death of their bearer. Using cloned organs as replacements is possible, but is even more expensive and they begin to fail faster and faster with every new implantation. Cloned limbs however are a viable alternative to bionic limbs, and are more expensive than basic bionic limbs but less expensive than the top quality bionic limbs. 'Rejuvenation' Rejuvenation treatments - also known as Juvenat '''or '''Rejuv - are a cheaper and more commonly used type of life extension than bionic replacement. Rather than replacing organic components Rejuv is a drug treatment that has a host of effects on the recipient, most significant of which is the lengthening of their telomeres and reversal of genetic degradation. These effects extend the human lifespan without a need for artificial replacements. It is important to note that rejuv only serves to combat the effects of natural ageing, and will not have an effect on physical damage such as a bullet through the chest (though having a more youthful body will help survive the wound should death not be immediate). Rejuv becomes less effective as the recipient grows older, with each successive treatment requiring a higher concentration of drugs and more advanced technology along with exponentially diminishing returns. As these treatments are quite expensive the amount of life extension a person can afford again depends heavily on their wealth and power. A person's first rejuv is typically sufficient to more than double their average lifespan to around 160-180 years. Those among the Nobility can typically afford this preliminary treatment - which requires only a relatively small concentration of the drug - with ease, and as such most Nobles undertake it as soon as they reach adulthood. The ageing process is similarly decelerated, with a 100 year-old Noble having a physical body more akin to a 40 year-old. Those who undertake a first rejuv treatment at a later age will find their ageing halting completely - or even reversing - until their physical body is in-line with their new lifespan. Because of the relative cheapness of the first rejuv treatment it is quite widely available (relatively speaking). 'Nobility' is often defined by a family's ability to trivially afford this treatment for all members, and even particularly successful middle-classes might be able to afford the treatment by selling most of what they own. However for important members of Imperial institutions this service is often freely provided. Officers of both the Imperial Guard and Imperial Navy, Inquisition personnel, Adeptus Arbites, Stormtroopers, Ecclesiastic preachers, Adepta Sororitas and more all have relatively free access to a first rejuv treatment should they be considered important enough to keep them in a more physically capable state. Further treatments and life extension are much more expensive and therefore much more limited. More powerful Nobility or highly-ranked members of Imperial institutions (such as Imperial Guard Generals, Imperial Navy Captains, Ecclesiastic Bishops, Sororitas Canonesses etc.) are usually rich/valued enough to have lifespans of around 250-300 years. Above them are things like Noble Dynasty Patriarchs/Matriarchs, Lord Generals, Admirals, important Planetary Governors, and Cardinals. These elite-of-the-elite can expect to live for around 380-420 terran years before treatments become too expensive and they must pay their eternal debt to the Emperor. The most important & powerful few figures in an entire sector - for example the Sector Governor - can use their immense wealth and political leverage to acquire nearly limitless treatments. However even this will not allow a person to live more than 480-520 terran years, as beyond this point rejuv does not even buy the recipient enough life to offset the time lost undertaking the treatment. Finally the most powerful figures in the entire Imperium - aside from the Emperor himself - are the High Lords of Terra. Through the use of advanced rejuv and high-quality bionic augmentations crafted on Mars itself the High Lords of Terra are capable of living to even 1000 years-old. However after this point dementia begins to set in, which will usually trigger the High Lord in question's hasty replacement. Rejuvenation treatments are not perfect however and can have a number of side effects (though most are related to the changing mental state of the recipient rather than the drug itself). Recently rejuvenated people can often be so caught up in their new vigour they overestimate their capabilities and injure themselves. Others can grow dulled to their mental impulses as the centuries drag on, seeking ever greater extremes to illicit an emotional response. As such there are entire industries devoted to taking advantage of the impulses of recently rejuvenated Nobles, selling them things like expensive foods to sate their new appetite or fine clothes designed to show off their newly youthful form. 'Warp Influence' The warp can have a massive effect on a person's ageing, either through time dilation during warp travel or sustaining a being's life through power alone. The most widespread form of warp influence of ageing is warp travel. When travelling through the warp time flows at a different rate as in realspace. For example an outside observer may measure a ship as taking 6 months to warp jump across the sector and back. The shipe itself however will only experience perhaps a few weeks, the people within only ageing as such. This therefore creates a discrepency in these people's 'true age' (time experienced by the individual) and 'chronological age' (difference between current standard galactic date and the person's date of birth), with the latter being larger than the former. The difference between the time-in-warp and realspace time varies enormously, for the vagaries of the warp are incredibly haphazard. Though most warp jumps experience a relatively uniform time discrepency, on rare occasions the tides of the warp can change and plunge the ship into a massive time warp. These can make the ship experience hundreds of years as only days pass in realspace, or only let the ship experience a few weeks as millennia pass in realspace. On extremely rare occassions it could even displace the ship backwards in time, arriving at a point in time before it left. These paradoxes result in two identical versions of the ship and its crew existing at the same time. The ship that has been displaced backwards usually finds out what has happened quickly when they learn the date they have dewarped into, and will go to great lengths to avoid their doppelgangers. Interaction between warp travel duplicates is widely held as disastrous and can result in all sorts of terrible daemonic interference. Obviously the total discrepency depends on how often the person in question travels through the warp. A Nobleman who only travels once every few years for a holiday to Kinteros will have virtually no difference between their chronological and actual ages. Conversely an experienced member of the Imperial Navy or Chartist Fleets could have a chronological age up to 50% larger than their true age. This can result in people like Naval Admirals living for hundreds of years longer than their rejuv treatments would normally allow them, but only by chronological date. In actuality they have not personally 'lived' for more time than someone who may have died centuries earlier (but who never entered the warp). Beings that literally live in the warp - such as heretics who inhabit daemon worlds within a warp storm - can end up existing for thousands of standard terran years yet only experiencing a few dozen themselves. This means there may be Chaos Space Marines within the Eye of Terror who took part in the Horus Heresy, holding this ancient calamity as a recent memory. The other way the warp can interfere with a being's lifespan is if they are a psyker, for having the power of the warp flowing through ones body sustains it longer than should be naturally impossible. Rejuvenation procedures still work on psykers, but will not extend them beyond the rejuv's normal capacity. The life extending facet of psychic power varies depending on the strength of said power. Omicron level psykers often have a natural lifespan at the upper end of the standard human lifespan (ie ~90-100 years), representing their subconscious psychic ability working against the kind of incidental maladies that would cut a normal human's life shorter than this. Iota to Epsilon level psykers - should they master their powers before being consumed by them - can expect to extend their natural lifespan to around 100-150 years depending on their level of control. Unless chosen as a sacrifice to feed the Emperor (which obviously cuts their life short of its full potential) these assignments most often result in the psyker becoming an Astropath, so these interstellar communicators can serve for many decades in their vital role. Gamma & Delta level psykers - who if they can master their skills usually become sanctioned psykers - can live for around 150-200 years. Beta & Alpha level psykers are usually far too maddned by their own power to be permitted to live. Those few that are usually ascend to the rank of Primaris Psyker and can live for up to 250 or so years. Alpha-Plus Psykers are usually executed upon discovery. Those precious few that escape both Imperial justice and the chaos seeking to consume their soul have been known to live for several centuries. None have ever been recorded dying of natural causes so the true upper limit of their lifespan is unknown. The most powerful pyker in existence - The Emperor - is effectively rendered immortal by his psychic might. No other biological being in known existence has lived as long as him. 'Eldar' Ancient beyond reckoning, the Eldar were once functionally immortal but since the fall the method they used to achieve this has been lost. Nevertheless their natural lifespan is still far longer than a normal humans. 'Craftworld Eldar' The natural lifespan of an Eldar is over 10x that of a human, with similarly scaled life cycles. The age of full maturation is around 180-200 years old, and the average age of death is around 900-1000 years. The exception to this among craftworlds are Farseers. These immensely powerful psykers mature at a normal rate but then remain in peak physical condition indefinitely. However their strong connection to the warp will see their physical bodies slowly turn into crystal until they freeze into a crystal statue that will stand forever in their dome of seers. The amount of time a Farseer will live before this happens depends on the Farseer's power but it is usually somewhere between 5000-10,000 years, with the crystallisation beginning to set in after around 4000 years. It is important to note that this is only the natural lifespan of their physical forms. Through the arcane technology of infinity circuits and soulstones the Eldar still retain a form of immortality, albeit an incorporeal one within the virtual realm of the infinity circuit. This of course requires the recovery of the Eldar's soulstone after the death of their physical body so it may be brought to the infinity circuit (soulstones are reusable once the inhabiting soul is 'downloaded' to the infinity circuit). If the soulstone is destroyed or the Eldar died without a soulstone nearby their soul will be lost forever to the jaws of slaanesh, and whilst many Eldar have no fear of a physical death fighting for their people all live in terror of the 'true death' of their soul. 'Exodite Eldar' Exodite Eldar have the same natural lifespans and cycles as their Craftworld cousins. Furthermore the role of Farseer and its associated life extension also exists among Exodites, but with the title of Priest/Priestess instead along with various powers over the nature of their world. Exodites do not use soulstones, but their planets have a 'World Spirit' which is analogous to the Infinity Circuit in craftworlds. Should any Exodite's physical body die on their planet their soul will be absorbed into the world spirit. 'Dark Eldar' Vicious, amoral, and selfish, the Dark Eldar live mostly within the realm of Commoragh. Most Dark Eldar are conceived normally before being removed and vatgrown directly into maturity. The more prestigious 'trueborn' instead take the usual ~200 years to mature. Dark Eldar require the infusion of the souls of others to stave off 'the thirst'. This is the phenomenon that results from an Eldar living outside the rigid path system of craftworlds or the simple life of the Exodites. Their souls are slowly leeched away by Slaanesh, and so they need to feed on other souls to restore their own. As they grow older their thirst grows larger and larger - as Slaanesh drains more and more of their original soul - but provided they can gorge themselves on enough souls they can stay alive almost indefinitely. For example the most powerful Dark Eldar Archon - Asdrubael Vect - is rumoured to be over 10,000 years old. However Dark Eldar life is violent and ruthless, and their warriors must undertake dangerous realspace raids to secure the slaves whose souls they need to survive. This means most Dark Eldar will find their lives cut short - violently. Fortunately for them, Commoragh is also home to what are widely held as the most skilled biological scientists in the galaxy, the Haemonculi. Haemonculi are masters of medicine & torture in equal measure, and have even learned the secrets to defying death through science alone. Because of this the oldest Haemonculi eclipse even Vect in age, and are rumoured to have lived before even The Fall. Whenever a sentient being's physical body dies - Eldar, human, or otherwise - their soul goes to Limbo before moving onto the warp. The time the soul spends in Limbo can vary dramatically depending on the soul's reluctance to move on, the cause of death and the location of death (and the time the soul experiences can itself vary wildly from the actual realspace time passed). After this time has passed the soul is lost to the warp forever. The soul's dead body (or what's left of it) can function as an anchor for the disembodied soul - sometimes a cautious dark eldar may put aside a severed part of their body (like a finger) and leave it with the haemonculi just in case their body is completely obliterated at death. Provided these remains are delivered to a Haemonculous before the soul leaves limbo, they can use their arcane technology to return the soul to it's physical remains while simultaneously rejuvenating said remains to a complete body once more. This is achieved by the sacrifice of another soul in agony, and the Haemonculi's resurrection cradles are powered by the horrified screams of tortured slaves. With a monopoly on such technology the Haemonculi charge much for this service - though they freely regenerate their own loyal Wracks, some dying thousands of times in service to their masters. Organised Commorite factions such as Kabals and Wych Cults often foot the bill for the resurrection of their warriors killed during realspace raids, but this does not protect them from the traitorous intrigues that go on within Commoragh. As such any Dark Eldar in a position with a high risk of death such as a Kabal Sybarite with underlings seeking a promotion or a Wych preparing for an arena match will frequently invest an enormous amount of their personal wealth securing a secret resurrection policy with a haemonculous unknown to the rest of their Kabal/Cult. However the Haemonculi's method of resurrection is not foolproof, for it relies on the being's soul making it to Limbo after death. Capturing the departed being's soul in a device like a soulstone will prevent this from happening and prevent the soul from reaching its remains no matter how hard the Haemonculi attempt to invigorate the corpse with pain. Of course this could be considered beneficial, for when trapped within a soulstone the soul will never pass onto the warp thus putting no limit on how much time can pass before resurrection. If provided a full soul trapped within a soulstone the Haemonculi require no physical anchor and can simply regenerate the soul's body before transferring it into its new vessel. 'Orks' Category:World Building Category:Lore